


The Sinner's Dream

by jeza_red



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, F/M, Hunter's Nightmare galore, M/M, a very angry man stranded in a crap neighbourhood, i tagged just the speaking parts, takes matters into his own hands, the usual, uh everyone is here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 14:24:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10923669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeza_red/pseuds/jeza_red
Summary: The Hunter stumbled into and then through the Nightmare.This… this place, it wasn’t madness. This place was cruelty.Cruelty for everyone. For every poor soul that ended up addicted to Blood, to every Hunter coaxed into doing the Church’s dirty work and led down the steps to Hell by a gentle hand in a silken glove. For every sad beast that populated it…





	The Sinner's Dream

It wasn’t rage that drove him. If there was a word for a state of anger that doesn’t involve madness, that was the power that pushed him stumbling thought the Nightmare.

Because madness was something else, madness wasn’t here - it was Yharnam and its streets bathed in filth. It was Cainhurst with its harsh air and the wailings of the murdered women. It was the echoing emptiness of the Cathedral Ward and Yahar’Ghul crowding with cackling witches.

This… this place, it wasn’t madness.

This place was cruelty.

Cruelty for everyone. For every poor soul that ended up addicted to Blood, to every Hunter coaxed into doing the Church’s dirty work and led down the steps to Hell by a gentle hand in a silken glove. For every sad beast that populated it…

Yes, even the beasts, twisted as they were. Standing their ground while they trembled head to toes, wailing and whining at the sight of a Hunter’s coat. So different than the beasts in Yharnam; these creatures didn’t fight him out of rage or spite, no. They only fought when they were scared enough that escape became unthinkable… Some of them didn’t even try. How many times had they gone through that horrifying cycle to grow wary of even trying to survive?

His memory jumped back, to the Dream he dreamt last, to the moonlit Yharnam and the broken window, and a friend he could not save no matter how many times he’d tried. To the witty humour and constant worry, and a gentle trembling hand he’d only got to touch a time or two.

But it was the Hunters populating this Hell that started to chip at his already fragile sanity.

Red-eyed and monstrous in their thirst for violence; their every move polished by the eternity of repetition to the point where it lost its meaning, where it became instinctual like breathing to lash out and maim, and kill whatever comes their way. Whether it being beasts, other crazed Hunters, bloody corpses that still clung to some grotesque imitation of life…

God, the corpses.

He saw the one beating at the barred gates past the licker-infested ditch and threw up blood and bile. He watched, shivering and ill, as a caricature of a being grappled with rusted steel, trapped in its last moments of terror so all encompassing that it stayed with the bones after the flesh left them, pushing them crawling to safety even when the point of it was lost.  

“Were my hunters honourable?” The Accursed asked of him.

The Hunter waged his words. He wasn’t petty enough to cause him unnecessary suffering, but his anger demanded retribution. His anger made him cold and immune to regret over the fall of a great knight when the corpses of his victims piled high around them. “They were like you.”

Which, for a lesser man would mean something more than the sad, pitiful truth it revealed. Ludwig was not a lesser man - not a man at all, alas - and the truth he read in these words followed him into the sad, pitiful death he had earned for himself in the decades of faithful service to the Church.

In the cells he saw a man beating his head against the wall, a bloody smear on the bricks dried and crusted at the edges. Deaf to the Hunter’s entreaties, he chanted some ancient prayer even as guilt hung around him in a heavy shroud. A chilling and unsettling image - such honest and down to earth insanity - to see in a place like this.

Two churchwomen waited on him once he left the hollow chanting behind, to begin new prayer - one that he vaguely remembered.

Vicar Amelia, beautiful as ever. She came at him like a beast trapped in human skin that this time didn't split. Maybe he’d prefer if it did. If she was a two story tall monstrum instead of a wispy woman with eyes full of hatred and remembrance.

Oh, of course, he had killed her in his Dream and, drunk on blood as she was, she’d ended up here, to relieve her sins. He didn’t even attempt to feel bad about it.

Unaided, his thoughts ran back to Adella - the silly little example of innocence hiding a seed of madness slowly rotting her from the inside. Dreaming of a handsome Hunter in black to sweep her off her feet while her sleeves held poisoned knives. An unfortunate victim of her own circumstance.

He thought of Arianna, her pitiless eyes and white thighs; her strong grip a she was pulling him into a shadowed alcove to ‘soothe his heartache’ while the beasts roared outside of the Chapel. Her bony hands and veins containing more nobility than the Queen of Cainhurst could ever scrounge up. He was many things to many people, bereft of his own identity as he was - a friend, an unwitting saviour, an executioner and a terror. She alone saw him as a compatriot, for they shared the same plight - two beings to be used and discarded when their usefulness expired, despised whenever not desired. Both stuck in the middle of the Hunt, toys in the hands of the gods.

But then, she was clean, while he...The Hunter wondered briefly if there was a Hell prepared for him somewhere in this Nightmare. A room full of creatures that travelled into oblivion at the end of his blade, dripping with blood that covered his footprints whenever he wasn’t looking over his shoulder. Was he any different from the fallen knight of the Church at all in his zeal to clean Yharnam from the Scourge? Was he worth less scorn only because he stumbled into his role unintentionally?  

That uncertainty, however, became moot as soon as he stepped off of the impossible moving platform. When he saw what awaited him in the Research Hall.

Faced with the horror that spilled at him from behind every corner, he struggled to keep his wits about him. Throwing himself from room to room, tripping on burning chemicals and whispering piles of bloated flesh. At each step assaulted by the sordid history behind the Church that slowly squeezed the life out of its city. Understanding dawned in pieces and by the time he saw the full picture there were more holes in his coat than he could count and his stomach was too empty to heave.

No wonder there were so few women left within the city proper, sans the precious few, willing to leave their houses. No wonder their men wandered the streets like feral beasts, alone and vicious.   

Secrets within secrets, and monsters making monsters, and what the hell had he done in his life to end up amongst it all? Was he an evil man? Someone cruel? Did he offend the God? What sins had he committed? Remembering wasn’t his strong suit, but he knew that he came to Yharnam with scars on his face and one eye made of glass, before the Moon decided to fix it for him. Now he had two working eyes, but a shroud of bloody mist pulled over his face and no idea where to even start looking for his past.

“Only an honest death can cure you now,” she’s said to him. The Lady of the twisted tower, the Holy Maria of the tortured and damned.

The face of the Doll from the Dream that held him hostage. A face made of flesh and skin, with real blood underneath - and yet it was even less animated and alive than the one made of bone. (Or was it wood? The Doll was hollow and hard, but her creaking hand was smooth and grainless, yellowed at the edges of the joints, unlike any wood he’s ever seen.)

Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower.

Another monstrum left to expire slowly way past its time. Guarding a secret for the ones that made her into what she is, while detesting them in the same breath. A different kind of a toy, resentful and proud, but still unable to go against her masters’ wishes. A hound trained too well.

An honest death? He wanted to laugh. Is that what she was waiting on? Wishing that someone came to wrestle the burden of that secret from her trembling hands?

Preaching about mercy when the way to her throne led through an orgy of suffering.  

There was nothing honest in Yharnam, just lies and illusions, and ill-conceived truths that all lead to madness. For a moment he considered leaving - he had slaughtered all living flesh in his wake, nothing breathed behind him, nothing moved. He could go back into the lake of blood and let that stillness soothe him; kneel before the lantern and let it take his spirit back into the Dream he understood and hated on even terms. Let her suffer her fate forevermore, in the nightmare her soul couldn't let go of.

But no, there was still work to be done. So many damned he had to set free, the voice whispering filth and hatred in the back of his head he had to silence.

Simon told him to keep pursuing, to walk towards the end of this labyrinth until he sees the light.

Beast skin-clad Hunter took on the role of his Minotaur, barring him access to the secret so many have died for and because of. Appearing whenever his shaking hands managed to grasp the tattered length of the thread the ever-elusive Ariadne was weaving for him.  

She was there, alright, like a thorn in his side. A dead memory that refused to fade. Mother of a child that never got to be born, a goddess of a fallen hamlet that reached from beyond death to drag it into the depths after herself.

He understood her, in a sense, her rage and her tragedy, and the helpless sort of anger that kept her from passing through the veil. The same anger flowed in his veins, after all. Because, he wasn't going to go quietly, no, he will claw and tear his way through this neverending night until the Satan himself shows up to drag him to Hell with his own two hands. He will scream at the bloody sky and the damned Moon, and he will pull these Gods from the aether one by one under his blade if that’s what had to happen for this horror to end!

He will close the doors to this Nightmare after himself - tightly enough for the mournful mother to suffocate in her own helpless anger, leave her rotting on the barren shore in the slick juices of her passing. May no other be pulled down to keep her company, may no other suffer her wrath!

But when the child finally dropped to the cold sand and its soul flew into another world, the Hunter didn’t feel much of anything anymore. The blade slipped out from his trembling hand - the last gift from Simon that left him with shredded fingers where the bowstring cut into them with every pull, feeding on his blood to power each shot. He hoped that he’d honoured the old harrowed Hunter well in this last battle.

Hatless, he undid the scarf protecting his face and pulled in a long breath of the salty air, damp and cold, but so unlike the fishy foetor of the lost hamlet or the smoke-choked streets of his city. He shed his gloves, ripped as they were, and his stained coat. The gun left an indent in the sand when it was dropped and for once the Hunter didn't care that he will have to waste time on cleaning the mechanism.

Spent and trembling he was, few things mattered to him, but Her body rotting on the shore and the hunger screaming in the hollow of his stomach. Connecting the two wasn’t hard, he has eaten worse things after all. Didn’t he? It was hard to remember.    

Afterwards, he wandered away from the shore, into the shallow waters of the cove, eyes fixed on the horizon littered with wrecks. Broken masts and ripped sails flashing in and out of fog, the sound of creaking wood carried by the water. He felt like he could hear it through his skin, like he was breathing through his fingertips. Submerged to the armpits, he felt weightless and immaterial.

When he looked down into the water he saw the spires he knew so well, the roofs he scaled, the streets he purged. His Yharnam stretched in the depths, an eternity of suffering locked into a spiderweb of streets and alleys, and closed doors.

That one Dream he couldn’t stop dreaming, couldn’t discard. He refused to awaken and now it wasn’t even an option anymore, since Gherman was gone and there was no one to sever the Dream for him. All he could do was to reawaken in Yharnam, again and again, traverse his city end to end, trying to save it from drowning while, in fact, it has already been pushed underwater before he even set a foot in it. He thought of the blind Agatha waiting on his return, her twisted body filled with kindness to the brink. That one lonely specter, the only one that he’s managed to save in all of his attempts. Homeless and discarded, and more of a Saint than the whole Church put together...

He looked at the city under the waves and felt something grow in his chest. Pressure and heat, not unlike having a red-hot pitchfork stuck under his ribs, not unlike tasting the really old blood from the last remnants of Pthumeru haunting the catacombs. Not pleasant, but not unwelcome. A feeling he got after killing a great beast. Of visiting the Odeon’s chapel before the Moon rose and seeing his people alive still.

With the blood of the next god pulsing in his veins, he looked down and suddenly knew with perfect clarity the path he had to follow.

To save his city.   


End file.
